MPs can more or less write their own job description, so from Edmund Burke to Nadine Dorries, the appropriate weight to give to constituents, Westminster, public argument and personal judgment has mostly been a subjective choice, a calibration between the costs of conviction and the power of convention. But having written it, they have to defend it. The judgment of Ms Dorries, the controversial Tory MP for Mid Bedfordshire, that taking part in I'm a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here is appropriate is definitely bold, probably not in a good way.

It has produced a level of abuse that would shatter a more fragile ego. She is accused of disgracing an MP's role and betraying other women MPs to boot. The communities secretary, Eric Pickles, backed by the Daily Mail, has appointed himself leader of a campaign to keep her in the jungle for as long as possible. Ms Dorries, whose unblushing capacity for attracting attention has a certain appeal in this grey, cautious era, claims she is owed lots of time off and that she wants to use the chance to talk to millions of viewers about her campaign to reduce the upper age limit for legal abortion, while demonstrating to voters that her reputation as the toff's scourge is a genuine product of authentic northern working-class roots.

It was not a promising project, even before Ms Dorries had the Tory whip withdrawn, but it is inescapably the case that democratic engagement is viewed as something for geeks with a power complex. Something has to be done, and generations of theorists and politicians have failed to find out what. It's 50 years since Harold Macmillan took his white fur hat to Moscow, and more than 40 since Harold Wilson gave the Beatles MBEs and later wangled an invitation on to Morecambe and Wise's TV show, yet the pollsters continue to report an ever more yawning gap between voters and their representatives. The harder they try to look like us, the less we like it, and the faster the political gene pool shrinks.

Ms Dorries, who once attacked Louise Mensch for daring to raise the school run, belongs to the school of feminism favoured by her heroine Margaret Thatcher, so she might not acknowledge the streak of misogyny underlying the noisy disapproval (she should watch the video of David Cameron calling her "frustrated" and think again). The producers want Ms Dorries because she's good copy. But having endured the snakes and creepers of parliament for so long, it is just possible that she may get out of the real jungle alive.